‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Has the Biggest Opening of All Time

“This represents a new record for the industry and portends a massive and potentially record-breaking opening day and weekend for the film”, said Paul Dergarabedian, of box office tracker Rentrak.

The numbers for “The Force Awakens” are also unprecedented for a film premiering in December.

The movie, directed by J.J. Abrams, received a 95 per cent score on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

– Highest theater average for a wide release ($57,568). Audiences set a number of records for advance ticket sales on sites such as Fandango. As a result, The Force Awakens is the first movie to ever earn more than $100 million in a single day, which also makes it the fastest movie to ever reach triple digits. Tickets for the highly anticipated film went on sale in October and sold more than 200,000 tickets in 24 hours.

Thousands joined a mock lightsaber battle in Los Angeles, where an Australian couple married while waiting in line for the film.

Among other newcomers this weekend, the animated Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip racked up $14.4 million, and the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler comedy Sisters made $13.4 million. Abrams, the movie stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis, Domhnall Gleeson, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew and Max Von Sydow.

Even when adjusted for ticket price inflation, The Force Awakens is the biggest domestic December release of all time, according to Box Office Mojo. On Saturday alone, the film took £8.6m, the biggest business done on a Saturday for a movie ever in the UK.

The new “Star Wars” film is the first installment in a decade of the series, which was created by George Lucas in 1977. Disney said that 47 percent of the Thursday box office came from 3-D showings and $5.7 million from Imax screens.

That’s a deal separate from the Star Wars deal though, which means if you’re looking to stream the original six movies you’re going to be very disappointed.

Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger described the opening weekend in a letter to his employees as, “one of the proudest and most exciting moments in our Company’s history”, Variety reports.